OR and MSTS's paths part 2

[lindsayts]

Sadly BNSF1959 locked the "how does OR find MSTS's path" thread due to the usual internet chaos before I had finished with the subject. I submit this information as there is a some chance it will help at least someone.

But first a comment on the current situation.................

Sadly poor behavior in the internet will always be with us, one of the major causes of such behavior is in text communication one cannot see the reaction to what is writen. In direct communictation with someone else a large amount of information about the person one is talking to is conveyed by tone of voice and body language and most people will see this reaction and modify what the say/do accordingly. So under normal direct contacts such unpleastentness is largely avoided.
One ALWAYS must look between the lines to see what actually was writen and what was meant. It is rare in technical forums for a wrter of a post to mean direct harm, so everyone just needs to relax a little bit. When posting on the net I usually reread and correct all posts to make SURE they cannot be missinterpreted. It is not unusual for me to take 1 to 2 hours to create a post, this post for instance has taken so far 90 minutes of time.


Back to the topic,

Some one clear knowing OR said,

"Responding to the O.P. The very first time you install and start OR, it will search for an existing MSTS install to use to populate the folder list. The search strategy is to check the registry, and if not found, to look for it in c:\program files.

But after that it won't search again, instead refering to the folder list that you have created. That folder list is stored in your user folder under:

...\AppData\Roaming\Open Rails\folder.dat

To start fresh, you'll have to erase this file, something the uninstaller will do one day."

Lindsay responds..........

I thought there must be something like this but a look using windows usual file system tools did not discover anything (Note 1). I mounted the XP's C drive in Linux and the file is there alright. Strangely the file gives the path as D:\Games\msts which is where MSTS is installed and where XP's registry says MSTS is installed so why OR still can not find MSTS is a real unknown. I will erase "folder.dat" and see what sort of heart attack OR has then, as cleary something odd is going on.

Note 1: As previously stated I have not used any version of Windows much, my main operating for nearly the last twenty years being Linux for this OS I have an massive amount of knowledge. Yes LInux has been around for that long!!!!!

a REAL off topic comment, who is the person that come up with the file format for forums. A format that does NOT use CR's at the end of lines, what a pain that is.

Lindsay

[wacampbell]

Hello Lindsay,

I am the founder of Open Rails and I wrote the code that you are asking about.

So the way OR works is to assume you can have many copies of MSTS on your computer - what the community calls 'mini-routes'. Each one has a copy of train.exe and the entire folder structure on up from there. The idea is you might have one set for your european routes, another for your 1800's routes etc with the rolling stock relavent to that. I think we might end up calling these collections, but for now they are called folders.

You can add or delete these collection folders from the main openning menu. So if you find that OR hasn't located your base MSTS, then just add it manually using the button provided on the Main Menu. Although you shouldn't need to touch it, this list of folders is stored in the folder.dat file as mentioned above. The folder.dat file is located in the application data directory. The location of this directory varies from OS to OS. For XP it is in c:\documents and settings\xxxyour user namexxxx\application data\roaming\open rails. Note that the application data directory is often hidden by default by windows.

The first time OR is installed and starts there isn't a folder.dat file so, OR creates a default one and populates it with your default MSTS, searching for it first according to the registry settings and then just looking in c:\program files. But from then on, it will never look for MSTS again, instead refering only to the data stored in folder.dat.

[jovet]

For XP it is in c:\documents and settings\xxxyour user namexxxx\application data\roaming\open rails. Note that the application data directory is often hidden by default by windows.

Wayne, the "Roaming" folder is a Vista/7 thing. XP had Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data and Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data. These have been changed in Vista/7 to Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming and Users\<username>\AppData\Local respectively to make things a bit more obvious and consistent.

[wacampbell]

Thanks for that - I don't run XP and admit I was guessing where it was stored.

[lindsayts]

Very nice to say high to the founder of the project,
As previously stated I do NOT regard this as in any way a serious problem was just curious as to why it behaved in what was for me an unexpected way, situation at least for me made more difficult by my almost complete lack of interest in the techincalities in windows (Linux for ever)!!!!! . I have not tried the problem yet as the machine I am on is the problem machine and it is currently booted into Linux (Debian testing), Windows only being used for MSTS/OR.

Lindsay